Count the ways that the GOP in Congress is still trying to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). There are so many that you would need a calculator.

Start with the holding up through a -- you got it – yet another "threatened" filibuster of the appointment of Richard Cordray as official head of the agency. Currently, he is only in the position as a recess appointment. This limits his power, term and implementation of the full consumer protection law that was enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which the Republicans loathe, as weak as it is. [...]

Reid, in what now is a tired toothless threat, says that he may end the non-filibuster/filibuster by reducing a closure vote to merely needing a majority and not 60 votes. [...]

Meanwhile, the consumers are already benefiting from the CFPB, even if in its weakened stake, and from regulation of financial legislation in the Dodd-Frank law [...]So until Cordray ... is confirmed by the Senate, the right of consumers to be protected from predatory financial institutions and banks hangs by a thread. All because 43 GOP Senators -- who represent roughly only about a third of the US population because they are mostly from states with relatively small numbers of voters -- have signed a letter opposing not just Cordray (remember Obama dumped Elizabeth Warren who designed the agency due to GOP opposition), but any Obama nominee to head the agency [...]

A "take no prisoners" Republican caucus is defying two-thirds of the US population, a majority by anyone's standards, by merely scaring Harry Reid for the umpteenth time with a filibuster that never occurs because Reid won't call their bluff. [...]

Why the Democrats don't take the ball and ram it to the goal post may be more a testament to the power of corporate and financial institutions over Congress than to Reid's craven capitulation.